1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to dynamic preloading of web pages.
2. Description of Related Art
The World Wide Web is a feature of the Internet which includes web page servers, for storing web pages and transmitting the information on those web pages on request, and web browsers, for requesting web pages from web page servers and presenting the information on those web pages to operators.
One problem which has arisen in the art is that it can take substantial time to transmit a web page from the web server to the web browser. This problem is particularly acute when the web server has other demands on its processing power, when the web page is laden with data or graphics, or when the communication link between the web server and the web browser has low communication bandwidth. An operator of the web browser perceives substantial transmission time as excessive latency in loading the web page and slow display of embedding graphics, each of which can degrade the utility for that operator of using the World Wide Web.
One known method has been to provide programs which, having been given a set of web pages, download those web pages to local storage in a “batch mode”, for presentation by the web browser to the operator from the local storage. While this method provides for reduced latency in loading web pages, because they have already been downloaded before they are presented to the operator, it suffers from the drawback that the operator must specify which web pages are desired in advance. Thus, these methods sacrifice the interactive nature of the World Wide Web, which greatly reduces their usefulness.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a technique for loading web pages more quickly, while preserving the interactive nature of the World Wide Web. This advantage is achieved by a method and system according to the present invention in which pages are dynamically preloaded when links to those pages are accessed, so that latency and display time for those web pages is markedly decreased, while allowing the operator to dynamically select web pages for presentation.